Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2004 in the subject Business economics - Operations Research, grade: 1,3, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät / Entrepreneurship& Innovationsmanagement), language: English, abstract: One of the most important things in the development of a new product or innovation is to find out the quantitative demand in the future market or focussed social system. How many people will adopt my innovation and how fast is this process? An answer to this question allows to calculate the costs of the innovation forecast and to optimize its specific characteristics. Not at least the knowledge about the innovation diffusion process leads to a better marketing strategy and more sales. Therefore this assignment tries to take a closer look into the basics of the innovation diffusion theory based on research results by E. M. Rogers (II). The main elements will be specified and its affects on the speed of innovation diffusion will be extracted. Furthermore this work includes a critical description of the mathematical model of innovation diffusion processes developed by F. M. Bass in 1969 (III). Special focus in this part will be the interpretation of the coefficients p an q. At least there is a short summary about the effectiveness of innovation diffusion theory according to Rogers and Bass in face of reality (IV).